shrek has everything you love though: hollywood actors instead of voice actors, "realistic" character models, pages upon pages of superfluous dialogue, cheesy topical humor and swear word jokes. its as if a guardian angel had this movie made special for you

You know, I don't think there's any way for me to make anyone understand how much I despise Shrek. Not one moment of any movie is funny--its hideous, rife with parody of the latest stupid movies that stupid people enjoy. I have to say, it just brings the worst side out of me.

I'll say this just once, but I enjoyed the first Shrek in theatres. Mind you, I was 11 years old. I didn't think of it as the greatest CGI film ever, but I didn't think of it as the worst. It was fun, and entertaining to a degree.

"By the way, can Rankin/Bass sue them for (poorly) ripping off the Heatmiser?"

I was thinking the exact same thing. Some of those stills look like Rankin/Bass characters without the (in my opinion) charm. It's as though the CG people have finally realizes that the closer they get to the "uncanny valley", the less their character can be: a) a cartoon, b) funny. Unfortunately, I seems like they may know the problem, but have no idea how to solve it.

I was expecting you to talk about the director working on Ren and Stimpy at some point. I don't remember you mentioning it before.

This leads to a lot of questions.

Like, is she actually proud of the first Shrek?

Does John find any good qualities in the first Shrek? I'm talking about the concept, I know the visuals are terrible.

How can a good artist end directing such a horrible looking movie? I guess the state of CGI was a little primitive back then. Also maybe the studio had more influence in the final look than its own director.

I go to the cinema very often and I watch almost any movie that's animated, just because I enjoy going to the theater. I actually have watched the three Shreks. I don't like them. I don't totally hate them either. I really don't think the first one was a lot better than the other two. All of them are mediocre, watchable but ultimately disposable. Yes, the first one is a little better, but it's still mediocre.

I'm not mad about the characters or jokes but there are some decent parts. Gingerbread Man is always the funniest thing in these movies, the most likeable character BY FAR. Puss In Boots is also entertaining.

The visuals are the worst part and they seem to be getting worse. The villain character in this fourth movie is even uglier than every previous character in the saga.

When I see this I remember when you talked about the lost concept of evolution, showing those frames of South Park in its first and last seasons.

Now that there are CGI movies that look better than Shrek they should have redesigned the characters to make them less realistic and more like The Incredibles. But now the general option is to continue with the same look. If the designs had changed a little in each movie the change of style wouldn't have been so radical.

Yes, I'm pretty sure they have introduced some changes, but probably the wrong ones, like adding more hairs or something.

so this co worker vicky once worked for you and now shes the director of shrek ,so do you consider shrek to be inspired by ren and stimpy I mean the gross jokes,and those ugly close up paintings might have inspired vicky into making shrek what It is today?

I couldn't say. My guess is that modern animated movies are the products not of anyone's individual vision, but rather a scattered accumulation of compromises made out of fear by members of large committees.

I'm going to take a more charitable stance towards this robot puppet series for once.

it could be that I am seeing workers trying to pull what enjoyment they might from the gig and doing mild things to please themselves. Or it could merely be a lucky side effect of the way they had to deal with light and color given that the film is going to be 3D, and they are merely trying to minimize contrast to prevent ghosting from overlapping images.

I'm seeing a bit of Maxfield Parrish.

Less hard shadows less blind slavery to razor sharp realism of pores and textures. Less primary colors. A bit like the background paintings to Snow White.

Even the best animators have to work on projects they don't like sometimes. The reason could be contract obligations and other times it's a matter of paying the bills when undesirable projects are the only things around. In regards to the studios who produce films like Shrek, sometimes you have to lay the desire to make "art" aside and please your audience. Films need funding to be made and I'm sure the surplus from the Shrek sequels funded How to Tame Your Dragon.

A good film to watch to better illustrate my point is Preston Sturges', "Sullivan's Travels" with Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. The allegory is a poignant one.With this said, I retract my previous snide statement.

A couple months ago, as an alum of SVA I was able to attend this semi recruiting/this-is-what-it-takes-to-work-here even that Dreamworks did at the school's new theater. I arrived about 10 minutes late, just tin time for them to show the "creative" process for a scene from the new Shrek. Of course they showed the storyboards with the actors' voiceovers first.

Those drawing were actually amazingly appealing and funny. The storyboard artist's take on the characters (Shrek and Rumple Stiltskin) were very cartoony and expressive. The gags were rendered hilariously. Even the timig was funny. (pretty good for a cartoon essentially running at about 0.04 frames per second!)

Then they showed the same scene in various level of CG renderedness. And jeeez, they ruined all the fun. By the time they got to the fully rendered cinematic version, tHe uncanny valley never ran so deep. Trying to imagine these robo-beasts as believable characters was out of the question. Half the gagas were bare a tenth as funny because all the exaggeration and funny facial expressions were halfheartedly forced upon their inflexible wire-frames. Even the timing of the gags were ruined, because all the movements were overly smooth.

It was basically a first hand look at how great cartoons can be ruined by the modern studio system.

The rest of the program was a series of examples of "good" demo reals of recently hired students. Some of them were much more imaginative and fun than anything I've seen come out of Dreamworks. I think the industry would be better off if a bunch of new animation grads were able to form their own studio from scratch rather then have to work for the few established studios who seem to only have a capacity for smooshing potential and imagination.

I don't get the appeal of realistic character design in animated films, especially if it's in a comedic movie. Stop motion animation seems to be the only place where semi-realistic character designs work. Any other medium, it just won't WORK.

Nate Bear, that's a sad and interesting story. Even though Shrek's film are too talkative and somewhat contrived in its dialog I also have the impression that it would be funnier if the faces of the characters were more cartoony. It seems that you saw how it happens.

I thought that when I watched Flushed Away and I laughed at several gags. The guy who went to the theater with me pointed out that some of those gags were similar to others in the Shrek movies, that I use to criticize. I had to recognize some of them were pretty similar but it was funnier just because of the more cartoony look.

And.. yes.. It's as bad as you'd think it could be. Visually AND as a movie. The dialogue is terrible, and none of the voices match up AT ALL to the jittery cgi motion. Everything is hairy or fluffy, wrinkly and diseased, talking like a madman or waving their arms in our faces.

It's a shame too, cuz when I first saw the commercials, I wanted to give it a chance. ah well..

The odd thing about Dreamworks is that, except for Shark Tale, over the years their characters have gotten slightly less hideous in all their works EXCEPT for Shrek. I remember seeing How To Train Your Dragon with my sister and saying to her, "That's the first Dreamworks Animation movie I've seen where the character designs didn't make me cringe."

CG humans will never look natural, from what I've gathered. I agree with whoever said Gingy had the most appealing design in the series - he sure does.